Цитаты из книги «Pollyanna / Поллианна. Книга для чтения на английском языке»

“Dr. Chilton, I should think being a doctor would be the very gladdest kind of a business there was.”

“Yes,” responded Pollyanna. “But I don’t see it that way at all. I don’t think you have to LEARN how to live. I didn’t, anyhow.”

“Aunt Polly says they’re ‘learning to live’”, sighed Pollyanna, with a rueful smile.

“Why, I don’t know. I reckon perhaps there are,” she admitted. “I like to do ’most everything that’s LIVING. Of course I don’t like the other things very well – sewing, and reading out loud, and all that. But THEY aren’t LIVING.”

“Maybe. But what I mean is, that legs don’t last – broken ones, you know – like lifelong invalids, same as Mrs. Snow has got. So yours won’t last till doomsday at all. I should think you could be glad of that.”

“Oh, no! It couldn’t be till doomsday, you know, when the angel Gabriel blows his trumpet, unless it should come quicker than we think it will – oh, of course, I know the Bible says it may come quicker than we think, but I don’t think it will – that is, of course I believe the Bible; but I mean I don’t think it will come as much quicker as it would if it should come now, and – ”

“Oh, but Aunt Polly, HERS will last. She can always be sick and have things, you know; but his is just a broken leg, and legs don’t last – I mean, broken ones. He’s had it a whole week now.”

“Oh, that’s all right, then. I’m glad I’m EXtraordinary,” sighed Pollyanna, her face clearing. “You see, Mrs. White used to say Mrs. Rawson was a very ordinary woman – and she disliked Mrs. Rawson something awful. They were always fight – I mean, father had – that is, I mean, WE had more trouble keeping peace between them than we did between any of the rest of the Aiders,” corrected Pollyanna, a little breathless from her efforts to steer between the Scylla of her father’s past commands in regard to speaking of church quarrels, and the Charybdis[101] of her aunt’s present commands in regard to speaking of her father.

“Aunt Polly, please, what is extraordinary? If you’re EXtraordinary you can’t be ORdinary, can you?”

“I can’t help it, Nancy,” she argued with a shake of her head. “It must be that there are some things that ’tisn’t right to play the game on – and I’m sure funerals is one of them. There’s nothing in a funeral to be glad about.”